Search for a Cure- Chemical Condoms

Reasons For Hope (RFH)

is Search For A Cure's national HIV treatment news series.

RFH covers the latest in developing therapies for treating HIV/AIDS.

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Why We Should All be in a Clinical Trial

It is hard to get people to join a study of new medicines nowadays. This is mostly because people think the therapies we have are good enough. It's not true. HIV medicines fail some people. And they are too expensive for most of the world to use.

The medicines we have are not a cure, are a lifelong financial burden and have lots of side effects. The only way to see if new therapies work is to test them on people with HIV. The only way to see if a vaccine will work is to test it on people without HIV. If we want the day to come that HIV is a thing of the past the most important thing we can all do is find a study that needs us and join it.

chemical condoms

The search for a way to stop the epidemic continues on many fronts including vaccines, microbicides, and chemical prophylaxis.

There has been progress in each of these areas. But it is slow. By all estimates, vaccines are many years away. If the vaccines with the most promise which are in testing right now turn out to be effective it would still be 5-10 years before they would be available to the public--and that is if everything goes well.

Microbicides are still in the safety testing phase. Microbicides are lubricants which contain chemicals that kill HIV. They are very important not only because they may protect a person from getting HIV and other sexually transmitted illnesses but also because women and gay men can control their use rather than only rely upon a partner to use a condom.

There is good safety data on the use of tenofovir, an antiviral drug, in a gel as a microbicide. Early this year a study was released showing that the use of tenofovir ( Viread) mixed in a gel as a microbicide was safe. Dr. Kenneth Mayer, director of the Brown University AIDS program, along with his colleagues looked at 84 women ages 18 to 45 finding that 94% were happy with the gel and the use of the microbicide cause no serious side effects.

This type of gel has been shown to protect monkeys from a virus very similar to HIV.

But there is much more to be done and scientists working on microbicides say that they think a successful microbicide is years away.

There is good news about using antivirals to protect a person from HIV infection. This use of antivirals is finally being studied in several countries including the United States.

An important piece of animal data relevant to the use of antivirals as a way to protect a person from getting HIV was presented at the 13th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Denver earlier this year gives hope this may be a realistic use of antivirals.

Researchers from the Center for Disease Control reported on a first ever complete protection of monkeys from a virus very similar to HIV. Injections of two drugs used to treat HIV patients completely protected monkeys from becoming infected.

Rhesus Monkeys were tested by injecting them with a type of Truvada. This is a once a day antiviral made by Gilead Sciences. It is a combination of two drugs, Viread (tenofovir) and Emtriva (emtracitibine).

The monkeys were given a virus that is a combination of HIV and a monkey version of HIV. This combination virus is called 'SHIV" The scientists tried to infect the monkeys with SHIV for two weeks. The six monkeys that received the drug injections were all completely protected from infection. Most of the monkeys that did not get the antiviral became infected.

The CDC said, " [scientists] believe the findings may be the strongest animal data yet suggesting that potent antiretrovirals given before HIV exposure may prevent sexual HIV transmission".

Studies to see if antivirals might protect people from getting HIV are ongoing in the U.S. and in other countries. We will not know the answer for several years. We also don't know if people treated with antivirals to prevent HIV will develop side effects or will become infected with a resistant virus. It is critical to know the answers to these questions before preventative antivirals are used outside of studies.

If 'chemical condoms' become a realistic way to protect people from HIV, it will be a stunning new use of antivirals which for the most part have been used as therapy for people infected with HIV.

A new use that could slow down the epidemic.

We have good reasons to hope this is possible. Health Officials announced last year that San Francisco has had a drop in transmission among gay men during the past five years even though the gay population increased 25% during the same time period. They say this may, in part, be the result of the use of antiretrovirals.

We hope these new tools along with the tools we already have, will someday make HIV a disease of the past.

David Scondras is the founder and president of Search For A Cure.

Scondras developed the nationally-recognized HIV treatment series, Reasons for Hope . All articles in the series are reviewed by expert HIV doctors & scientists as well as an HIV positive & negative focus group to ensure both accuracy and understandability.

This article was reviewed by Dr. Rajesh Tim Gandhi, M.D., Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Attending Physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Partners AIDS Research Center in Boston and Dr. Walt Senterfit, Co-Chair of the Southern California HIV/AIDS Advocacy Coalition (SCHAC).

If you have any questions or would like to receive the Reasons for Hope series contact Search For A Cure at 617-945-5350 or e-mail at hope@sfac.org . Please visit our web site at www.searchforacure.org

Search For a Cure is a not for profit organization providing education, promoting access & advocating the basic human right to safe and effective treatment for all people living with HIV/AIDS.